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June 17 Saturday rain 14º C Bicycle touring
England We pay twenty pence each and get on. In London, at the ticket office, we buy a travel card for £2.80 each for unlimited travel on the underground tube and on any above ground buses in the Central London area. The subway is clean and free of graffiti. Following Alastair's explanation last night, it is easy to use. Sharon figures travelling in an English-speaking city is easily ten times easier than travelling in a city with a foreign language. I think it is infinitely easier. Once again, above ground, there are signs in English, pointing to various tourist sites. The signs are well thought out. They actually get you to where you want to go. London has a population of 14 million and gets around * million visitors each year. I see postcards -- twenty for £1 (such a deal!) so I have to buy them. The clerk is friendly and talkative. Everyone in London is so polite and patient. We go to an Outdoor store. Prices are pretty good. We've noticed that when riding escalators everyone stands on the right when they are riding -- leaving the left lane open for anyone who wants to walk up or down quickly. "Stand on the right, please," I heard, the first time I was standing obstructing the fast lane -- the passing lane. At Buckingham Palace there was an enormous collection of people gathered outside the gates. I wondered if there was usually that many to see the changing of the guard? Inside the gates, we see row upon row of Royal Guardsmen with red coats and tall black furry hats. The Guardsmen are standing stiffly at attention. We hear someone next to us in the crowd say there is going to be a flyover in ten minutes. Lots of barricades and bobbies line the streets for crowd control. Several are on horseback. I see a bobby take a tourist's camera and snap a picture of the tourist with Buckingham Palace in the background. How's that for police gentility? That's a first for me. The Queen and her entourage come out on a balcony. The crowd surges forward to the gate, waving tiny British flags. A low level flyover of nine fighter jets buzz the palace. Cool! I wonder if one of them were Tom Cruise? Several marching bands go out the palace gate and down the street. I liked the Scottish clan with their bagpipes and kilts. It begins to rain. We're in London, after all. We walk along a park path. I see a portable toilet and go to use it. On the door is a sign which reads: BBC crew only. (Skye to go behind a tree.) I use it anyway -- the experienced traveler coming through, eh? Never pass up an opportunity to use the washroom. At the edge of the park, near the exit, I see a touring cyclist with a backpack and a sleeping bag. He tells us he's just arrived from South Korea. He doesn't know much English. We know how he must feel. We all take our picture together in front of a war monument. He has a heavy tripod and he uses it to take a self-timer photo of all three of us. If one is going to lug a tripod on a bicycle tour, one may as well use the thing, I suppose. (It's infinitely lighter to just carry a camera and ask a bobby to take your photo ... but only in England, perhaps.) The rain continues. Sharon and I head for the National Art Gallery. A pleasant surprise -- it's free. Even poor people can afford to view art. The paintings were bought with public money, so they reason the art should be freely available to the public. Of course, donations are not refused. And the gift shop does a brisk business. We look at paintings from 1260 - 1500. Most are religious, of course. I have developed quite an eye for these. Interestingly, most of the paintings on display come from churches in Italy and are what I would have seen there if only the light was better in the old churches. In London's National Art Gallery the lighting is excellent and, rather than hung way up on a wall practically out of sight like in the church's in Italy, I can get a foot away from these and really see the detail. We join a tour group. The guide tells fascinating anecdotes about each painter and about the painting. We look at five different paintings, and the hour-long tour is quickly over. It is much more fun viewing famous artwork on a tour with a humorous and knowledgeable guide. Highly recommended! The paintings have a blurb beside them, too, with good information. I try out the computer room with a touch screen that has the Galleries works on it. In the gift shop a similar CD can be purchased for £50. By the time the National Art Gallery closed at 6 PM, the rain has ceased. The bus info pamphlet Alastair had given us said there was a London tour bus route. We tried to find the embarkation point, but after wandering around the Picadilly Circus area for an hour, we decided to just get on a bus and go wherever. We did. We passed lots of buildings. We need a tour guide! London's buildings are mainly grey or white and the grey or white sky with drizzle does little to cheer it up sight-wise. Other than that, London has the feel of a friendly and vibrant city. We took the tube back to Euston Station, where we had disembarked from our morning train. It is much faster on the underground and the colour-coded lines makes it is simple to use. Everything is well marked, plus the people are helpful, too. And we can practically understand almost every word! We're starving, having only eaten a Snicker's chocolate bar since breakfast, and it is now 8:30 PM. We find the Indian restaurants area Alastair had mentioned last night. We finally choose a trendy vegetarian place, after walking up and down the three block strip three times reading menus and trying to decide on meat or not. Not that we're worried about mad cow disease or anything. We chose a little hole in the wall meat place, but then got up and left as there was no one else there -- I considered that an ominous sign. Although it could have just meant that most meat-eaters are finished dining by 8:30 PM. Once we did get into "Chutneys," a vegetarian place, we had an enjoyable dinner with a variety of Indian dishes -- soup, rice, curries, sweet and sour, and dessert. All very tasty, and washed down with our first pint of draft beer. Back on the tube we went to London Bridge. We walked across the bridge and took in the beautiful sight of Tower Bridge with shining lights on the Thames river. The tube stops running around midnight, so we caught the 11:15 PM back to Euston and then bought a ticket back to Tring Station for £7.10. Back in Tring, I check the self-serve ticket machine. It costs £7.20 for a round trip fare, including a travel card for the day. Our folly cost us an extra $12. Live and learn. Oh, well. As Sharon says, "We're just here learning expensive lessons." We'll consider it admission price to the Queen's birthday party. All the lights were out when we arrived home at 12:30 AM. |
